TO CURE POVERTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13701, 18 March 1908, Page 6

TO CURE POVERTY.

Mr. 0. F. G. Maxtor in an, Mi'., says that it is a discovery of quite modern days that poverty is not a condition to be acquiesced in, but a disease to be fought against. Here are some of the changes which he thinks might give hope towards betterment. They are taken from his article in the Albany Review on "Causes and Cures of Poverty." "1. Active campaign against insanitary and uninhabitable houses with a view to lilting the', still resistant forces of decency and thrift from the- infection of their squalor. 2. The organisation of casual and irregular labour, especially in the new dock scheme, by the selection of a permanent class o: regular workers from the present crowd of (superfluous labour. 3. The fixing of a minimum rate of wages by means of State-devised Wages Boards in certain scheduled trades, by which the standard of remuneration may at least be raised to the level of the best employers. 4. The attempt at draining the abyss by (1) providing unemployed work of a rough, unskilled character of a sufficiently severe standard of energy, as far as possible to regular applicants ; (2) a large scheme of migration and emigration of superfluous casual labour to the colonies or other parts of England ; (3) a land colony devised to form a channel by which a certain number of the unemployed ntay be restored to the ; land. i>. The full working of the Medical Inspection of School Children and the Underfed Children Bill, by which the manufacture of the unemployed may be checked i at its source; with the addition also of I some large schemes of apprenticeship and j education designed to raise the boys and j girls from drifting persistently into the J ranks of low-paid, unskilled labour. I must confess," admits Mr. Masterman, "that this schedule of remedy sounds tardy and unlieroic. There is no remedy but socialism, say many, who are impatient with the slow movements of change and stimulated by the high hope of a new dawn. Socialism will very probably arrive in this country in the fulness of the times. It will not come in this generation, perhaps nob in this century. But if socialism were to arrive to-morrow, it is difficult to see what special hope and redemption it could provide for these maimed and broken lives, lying impotent at the gateway of the city. For here in the main is , the problem.of a population so battered by the world's harsh ways as to have sunk below every intelligible standard of efficiency. Socialism might ticket them, classify them, regiment them, deport them into penal or beneficent labour colonies. It could not effect much more for these particular individuals than might be effected by the definite reforms here proposed. It might do less, with the impatience for unresponsive humanity which would be certain to arise, with the failure of the first bright dreams of a transformed world. Meantime, while the day lasts, we must walk by the Jight of it, facing the work of the day. This redemption cannot be effected by eloquent orations at street cornels; still less by those who preach a barren gospel of leaving things alone, which is merely the counsel of despair. It can only be realised by persistent, unwearying effort, without haste and without rest, in which intelligence is demanded as much as compassion, and persuasion more than rhetoric and emotion. It offers no sensational miracle at the end of it all; but it works towards "the abolition of disorder and the abatement of misery; which is more worth a man's while to give his life for than most of the compelling ; objects of human endeavour." " '